Has a critical part of your project ever gone awry due to a team members inability to deliver consistent, reliable, quality output. a resource manager ever made you promises on behalf of their team, they can’t possibly keep? Ever had a management team ask a single team member for an estimate for a particular piece of functionality that required multiple inputs from many sources? What typically happens next is that the estimate which was not vetted becomes fixed and the team that has to do the work becomes disillusioned.
The weakest link on your team is the one that thinks it’s OK to hide their flaws from the rest of the team that is depending on them. Certainly, there is the benefit of doubt when it’s the first time that it happens, but if it is not addressed you will often see it happen again. Giving someone the benefit of the doubt repeatedly combined with a lack of empathy for the ones that are impacted is just another way for team dysfunction to persist. In essence, you create a promisory performative in the hope that the future might be more productive if viewed this way.
Problems can take many forms, show up in the oddest places, but always at the wrong time. It’s that part that most people forget – the time bound factor that makes a problem “special”. How many problems you face depends upon how many solutions to problems you are capable of handling or not. Dependent on time and how you solve for it, one problem can be nearly impossible to manage when there too many weak links in the process of delivering a solution. The Titanic comes to mind. For others one problem a minute is the norm’. A customer service representative comes to mind.
One could argue that one doesn’t deserve the problems one is confronting. That may be true, but what are you going to do about it? One thing I have learned is that when you don’t solve a problem you are facing the first time you are confronted with it you get an automatic ticket to that very same problem again and again. So, you have problems to solve? Well, after you’ve blown off a little steam go take another look at the problems you are facing and get to work on solutions. Reach out to your mentors and peers for assistance. You will quickly find that you are not the only one who has ever encountered the problems you are facing. Think of it this way, if you find that your peers have all encountered a problem similar to yours and have come out the other side then you were the weakest link in your circle of peers with respect to being a problem solver. Your peers will respect you for coming forward and you will learn how to be a better problem solver.
qualitasrebus 